Mother's Day

Mother's Day. I'm not really the biggest fan of the traditional concept of Mother's Day, as it happens. The reasons are blah blah and yadda yadda. However, one related aspect of it that I do like is a powerful declaration--a poem, really--written by Julia Ward Howe in 1970 as a part of her effort to raise support for recognition of a "Mother's Day for Peace" after the Civil War. She was unsuccessful, but it probably did start the ball rolling toward what ultimately became Mother's Day in 1914. Read the poem and some related pages about JWH if you like here: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/howejwriting/a/mothers_day.htm

Meanwhile, Dylan and Rachel did drive up from San Francisco on Sunday in a cute little CityShare Mini Cooper to hang out for a couple of days. Of course, we had some fun! For one thing, I can't get enough pizza. I could eat it every day. But Tom and I usually restrict ourselves to once a week on Sunday. About half the time, I make it from scratch, dough and all. That's what we did Sunday evening, each of us assembling one--the results of which you can see on the table, here (Tom's creation is still in the oven). And, yes, those are two eggs that baked on top of Dylan's masterpiece--a little unusual and it works!

Because both kids had to work on Monday, our breakfast table looked like this for awhile (Rachel didn't feel quite ready for prime time, so maybe you can tell that I helped her out a bit--what are mothers for?). In the next photo, you can see that Tom has passed his passion for working crosswords puzzles on to them, as well. So proud!

I did shamelessly play the "Mother's Day" card once by obligating them to follow me all over the property to look at the garden and rattle on about the baby trees I'd been planting. Fortunately we squeezed that little tour in on Sunday afternoon, as a wild and crazy spring storm was approaching. Monday was an indoor day as it rained and blew and hailed and even snowed a bit outside (this morning, there was a thin layer of granular snow on the deck!).

So, yes. I can have my little opinions about a day set aside for honoring mothers AND love that my kids are so sweet as to generously give me so much time from their busy lives on that same day. So sue me!